/Eire/ what is that country really?

File: LZgmXx4.jpg (242KB, 1600x800px) Image search: [Google]

242KB, 1600x800px

It was always my assumption, being born in the UK to Irish parents, that the Irish people were salt of the earth Nationalists and every Irishmens heroes were the likes of Wolfe Tone, Michael Collins and Patrick Pearse. From all the time I spent in Ireland with my family there they seemed to be in this mold.

I was always aware from my first learnings about the 1916 Rising that most of the population were against the Volunteers and IRA and while the average person was far from fond of the British Empire, most people were happy to settle for the work that was made available from it and as such did not support the instability rebels threatened. I however did believe that after the actions of General John Maxwell the previously pro Unionists elements of Irish society got fully behind Collins and saw the dead leaders and Volunteers as Martyrs.

In the last few years I have seen diversity and multiculturalism land in Ireland. As I assumed the Irish population were followers of the likes of Collins and Pearse, I assumed they would absolutely reject this. Instead, what I saw was a justification of 'we Irish should embrace multiculturalism as we were always migrants'. This thinking goes completely against what Pearse and Collins spoke about. The more I read about Pearse and Collins the less they are egalitarian communists as the post 1970s Sinn Fein would have you believe, but instead firm ethno Nationalists, who did not simply want Ireland want to exist outside of the harsh rule of Britain for the sake of it, but for the Ireland to be a powerful culture within an ethno state itself. Ethno Nationalism is all over the speech and writings of Irish Republicans for hundreds of years. And yet now the Irish population are pro multiculturalism.

It seems to me that despite being mostly revered as national heroes, the likes of Pearse and Collins were never endorsed by the majority of Irish and never will be. And as such Collins shouldn't have bothered getting out of bed.

Discuss.